White Chocolate Pudding
White Chocolate technically isn't chocolate; and this pudding isn't technically pudding. But it is nonetheless delicious with a robust sweet flavor and a thick creamy texture.
The word “pudding” has different meanings depending on which side of the Atlantic Ocean you live. To the British, “pudding” has come, over time, to be used synonymously with the word “dessert.” Americans, of course, know pudding to be a creamy, flavored, custard-like dish and in fact, American Pudding and French Custard are close in their ingredient list with sugar and milk at the helm, but custard is lighter having been thickened with eggs whereas American pudding is thickened with corn starch, as a rule, but flour or tapioca can also be used. However, modern interpretations of pudding these days can also contain eggs and egg yolks like this one does. So this recipe isn’t technically a pudding, but neither is it technically a custard because it uses corn starch. So, I guess it lies somewhere in the Sargasso Sea, on neither side of the Atlantic. That’s a nautical joke, in case you missed it.
I will be honest, I was so frustrated with this recipe from the Taste of Home website, I was ready to toss it down the drain and pinch-hit for some other dessert. It speaks to the problem with a lot of recipe sites in the blogosphere these days. They're so busy monetizing their website that they forget why the consumer clicked on their recipe to begin with, which was to learn how to make the dish. The Taste of Home website gave no information about technique which I will address below, and in fact, completely omitted the final step of the recipe, which is to refrigerate it after dishing it out into individual portions.
Luckily, I stuck with it, hoping for the best, and figured out that if the pudding was going to solidify, it had to be refrigerated. Since I've never made pudding in my life - not even the packaged kind that used a convicted sexual predator as its spokesperson - I didn't have the experience that told me this. It just seemed logical. If anything, I did not allow enough time for the pudding to be refrigerated, so it would have been nice for the Taste of Home website to have spelled it out for me. But, I came in just under the wire and all was well. The Taste of Home recipe also called for orange extract. Based on a number of website rating comments, that would be a mistake, so I substituted vanilla extract. One of my guests said I "knocked it out of the park." That was endorsement enough for me.
White Chocolate Pudding
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 3 tbsp corn starch
- 1/8 tsp salt
- 2 cups heavy whipping cream
- 2 cups whole milk
- 6 egg yolks, beaten
- 3/4 cup white chocolate morsels (like, Nestle's)
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1/2 cup pistachio nuts, crushed
- raspberries for garnish
Instructions
- Mix the sugar, corn starch and salt together in a mixing bowl, then whisk in the cream and milk until well combined. Transfer the mixture to a heavy saucepan.
- Bring the mixture to a simmer over medium low heat, whisking constantly. You do need to eventually bring the mixture to a boiling temperature in order for the corn starch to properly thicken it, but this must be done gradually. Look for little bubbles forming along the edges of the pot. Once the mixture is thick enough so that it will coat the back of a spoon, remove it from the heat for the next step.
- Using a ladle,very gradually pour a bit of the hot cream mixture into the egg yolks while whisking constantly. Stop when you put in a couple of tablespoons, whisk, and then repeat until the whole ladle has been mixed in to the yolks. This is a technique known as tempering. It allows the yolks to come up to a warmer temperature so that they won't turn into scrambled eggs during the next step.
- Return the cream mixture to the stove over low heat and slowly whisk in the tempered yolks. Stir constantly as the sauce thickens. Again, look for the little bubbles along the edges of the pot to know you're at the proper temperature. Keep whisking for another 3-5 minutes and remove the saucepan from the heat.
- Add the white chocolate morsels and vanilla extract and continue to stir until all the morsels have melted. This will only take a couple of minutes
- Ladle into serving ramekins and refrigerate for at least 3 hours.
- Before serving, dust with the pistachios and top with a couple of whole raspberries.
